by JC Ryan
Before they were all the way open, Digger knocked Rex to the floor just before a blast shattered the one panel. Rex would never be able to relate which had occurred first, or how Digger had known. Later, he’d chastise himself for letting his rage lead to a moment of carelessness. At the moment, he didn’t even think about it. He fired the shotgun with his left hand from the ground, the Sig still in his right.
As he fired, Digger leaped through the shattered panel on the right, narrowly avoiding the blast from Rex’s shotgun. Screams from the room beyond included a high-pitched one from a woman.
Rex scrambled to his feet, Sig and shotgun both pointed forward as he crashed through the remains of the doors.
Inside, the largest bed Rex had ever seen harbored the screaming woman and Mutaib, who was trying to hide behind her. Digger was standing on Iskandar’s chest snarling and biting his defensive arm, which he was trying to protect his throat with.
“Digger, off.”
The dog stopped and backed down but didn’t move far. Only enough to stand with his front paws on the fallen shotgun at Iskandar’s side.
Rex ignored Mutaib and the woman for now. They were no threat. Keeping his eyes and his weapons trained on Iskandar, Rex nudged Digger off the shotgun with his hip and kicked it under the bed and out of Iskandar’s reach.
“Get up,” he snapped.
Iskandar stood, strangely defiant for his situation.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you again, douchebag. We have some unfinished business if my memory serves me correctly. Don’t we?”
He laid the shotgun on a nearby table and dug in his pocket for the handcuffs. He held them out to Iskandar. “Cuff your owner,” he demanded.
The woman had stopped screaming but cried out in pain when Mutaib thrust her into Iskandar and tried to crawl away.
Rex motioned with the Sig for her to get out of the way and then pointed it at Mutaib before speaking.
“Listen, you royal coward, I can shoot you and Iskandar both before either of you blink an eye. Stop and allow him to cuff you, or I’ll shoot you in the stomach to start with.”
The woman scrambled off the bed and stood near Digger, who turned his head and licked her hand before returning his baleful stare to the two men.
Mutaib almost eagerly submitted to the handcuffs.
Rex kept the Sig and his eyes trained on Iskandar while he spoke gently to the woman. “I’m taking some of the women, those who want to go, away from here. If you want to go with us, go and find them in the courtyard. Tell them I have everything under control and will be there soon.”
She spoke for the first time. “I know of this, and of you and your big dog. I will tell them. Thank you,” she sobbed, before running out of the room.
When she’d left, Rex addressed Iskandar. “You’ll now show me where the women’s passports are kept.”
Iskandar told Rex to go and perform an anatomically impossible obscenity and crossed his arms.
Rex almost admired him for his stubbornness. He himself would have refused, in Iskandar’s place. He would have liked to torture the information out of him, but Mutaib was right there, and an object lesson would loosen his tongue, no doubt. Rex said, “Have it your way,” and shot Iskandar with a double-tap – through the heart and then through the head, right between his eyes.
He turned the pistol toward Mutaib. “Your turn. Where are the passports?”
Mutaib had lost control of his bladder at some point, Rex assumed when he’d shot Iskandar. He stumbled over his words in his eagerness to tell Rex anything he knew. Rex motioned with the gun for him to get off the bed and stand up. Mutaib did so with difficulty. It wasn’t a pretty sight. He’d been enjoying the woman who’d fled when Iskandar burst in to report the residence was under attack, and there’d been no opportunity since then to clothe himself.
Rex didn’t give him the time now. Mutaib’s modesty wouldn’t matter to him in a few minutes, and it was now well past dawn.
“Move.”
The prince waddled as fast as he could out of the room and down the hallway, his handcuffed hands cupped in front of his privates. Rex followed, his Sig never wavering from the back of Mutaib’s head. After a turn or two, they entered Mutaib’s study, where his desk resembled the impressive one in the office building – bare of anything related to business.
“Where is it?”
“In the center drawer, there is a remote control,” he said nervously. “It opens a panel, behind which is concealed my safe.”
Rex told him to sit, and the prince lowered his naked backside to his leather chair with as much dignity as he could gather, folding his hands in his lap. Rex found the remote and opened the panels. Behind them stood a gleaming stainless-steel box, a little shorter than Rex and about four feet wide, with double doors.
“Combination? Don’t bother to give me the wrong combination. I’ve disabled all alarms. If I use the combination you give me, and it does not work, I shoot you in the right knee. Got it?”
Mutaib was utterly defeated. He recited the combination and continued to sit meekly, even when Rex shoved the Sig into its holster and turned his back on him and worked the combination.
The double doors swung open to reveal a stack of shallow pull-out drawers on one side of the safe, and a set of fixed shelves on the other side. If neatness were truly a virtue – the only virtue – then Mutaib would have been a virtuous man. A six-inch by nine-inch card file contained passports, one for each of the women under his dubious protection. Rex took the entire box. He’d leave it in the harem quarters after each woman identified her own passport.
He took an external hard drive from one of the shelves on principle. If he’d been a betting man, he’d have bet it contained all the sensitive information on Mutaib’s scummy business, from the weapons suppliers he bought his arms-trade inventory from to the illegal small-time dealers he sold them to throughout the world, to his offshore bank accounts and their passwords. Making sure Mutaib knew he wouldn’t leave the hard drive in any case, he asked if his bet would have paid off.
Mutaib nodded. “My entire life’s work is backed up there. Please…”
“Don’t beg. It doesn’t become a man of your royal stature, and it won’t help anyway. Are there any passwords or ciphers I need to know about?”
“There’s just one to open the drive. A password-protected file contains the rest.”
“The password… and quit stalling.”
“My oldest son’s birthday, in your calendar. July fourth, two thousand. July written out, capitalized, the rest in numbers. For encrypted files, the cypher is the Gettysburg address.”
The irony struck Rex hard. This piece of trash loved a son born on Independence Day, and he’d used Abraham Lincoln’s poignant speech about the core belief of America, that all were created equal and by right should enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Though the Founders had said all men, the word men meant humans all of them — all men, and all women, not just the privileged or those of a certain skin color.
Rex left the ugly, gaudy gold chains and rings in Mutaib’s jewelry box. They’d be bulky and difficult to get through customs back in India or anywhere else. He helped himself to the loose diamonds, though, something to add to his collection in his own safety deposit boxes in India.
The collectible gold coins were bulky, too, but he had an idea for those. “How much are these worth?” he asked Mutaib, expecting no answer or a false one.
“About a million and a half,” Mutaib said miserably.
“Riyals?” Rex clarified.
“US dollars,” Mutaib corrected.
Over two-hundred-thousand apiece for the seven women. They should be able to get a decent new life with that.
Two-hundred-thousand wouldn’t go far in the States, but in the countries where the women would likely make their homes, it would set them up for life. He couldn’t get the women into the US, anyway.
As his gesture of generosity unfolded
in his mind, he knew some of them wouldn’t know how to handle money. Rehka had a degree in computing; maybe he could hire her to track down the money in the offshore accounts, set up a system to invest and distribute it, and keep the others financially sound for the rest of their lives. It would give her a job that wouldn’t be vulnerable to an unscrupulous boss or coworkers and allow her to live in dignity, free from the worry that someone might take advantage of her again.
The last thing he found in the safe changed his plans for Mutaib’s demise. He’d meant to beat him bloody, slice him up slowly, feed him his own genitals, and then shoot him or slice his throat. But that would take time, and time was what Rex didn’t have.
The only fate for him that Rex found satisfactory was one that would leave no doubt of his depravity. Rex took the bag of white powder from one of the shelves. He didn’t bother to point the pistol at Mutaib – the man would cooperate now without it. He surely understood what was about to happen.
“Get up.”
Mutaib rose awkwardly to his feet, still trying to keep his privates hidden, and stood mutely waiting for further instructions.
“Time for you to take a bath I reckon. You at least need to wash the piss off you.” The grin Rex turned on the man resembled an evil twin of the Cheshire cat.
Mutaib obediently led the way to his bathroom. He probably had no idea what was going to happen next. Maybe he thought he was really going to have a bath, put clothes on and go somewhere.
Rex began filling the large tub, and then handcuffed Mutaib to a towel ring while he found the rest of what he needed. He could have forced Mutaib to snort the cocaine, but he wanted to inject it if possible. Injected, a large dose of cocaine would treat Mutaib to unbearable anxiety before it killed him. And the anxiety might be focused on being found in his bathtub, unconscious from an overdose of a forbidden drug – something he’d be executed for if it didn’t kill him outright.
Rex found a prescription bottle of testosterone and the syringes and needles he’d need for injecting the cocaine in a tall chest. A heavy crystal glass sat on a tray near the faucets, so he didn’t have to go searching for the kitchen. He dissolved about a teaspoonful of the powder into half that amount of water and drew up the dose. Half a gram of the cocaine would be enough to give Mutaib a thrill first, before it killed him. Twice that, as he’d prepared it, should give him an immediate but swiftly fading rush, followed by screaming paranoia.
Just what Dr. Dalton ordered.
Chapter Twenty-Six
AS HE FOUND his way through the mansion to the harem quarters, led by Digger’s nose, Rex anticipated what he’d find. The noise of breaching the residence, clearing it of guards, and the final screams of terror from the dying prince would have echoed through. He knew there were far more women in the harem than those who had planned to escape with him.
Am I going to have to kill any? I hope not.
He also expected to encounter their faharmana, which was how he thought of the eunuch. To consider him an overseer of the women’s well-being, a chaperone or companion of sorts, like the older women often in charge of wealthy Spanish girls, was more comfortable for Rex than to consider him a man. He’d already chosen to spare him, if he didn’t fight but only tried to protect the women.
A few minutes later, Rex knew where he was, as Digger led him through familiar passages to the ornate doors to the harem quarters. For a moment, he considered whether to knock politely to announce his presence or go in with guns blazing. The possibility of innocent women and children waiting on the other side fearfully made his decision easy.
He knocked.
He had a few seconds to recognize the incongruity from the perspective of the women. They’d no doubt heard what sounded like an attack by people who wished them harm, and now a meek knock on the door. What would they be thinking?
One side of the double doors inched open, and one of the faharmana’s eyes appeared in the crack. Rex knew who it was from the bald head above the eye.
“Your master is dead. I am here to remove a few of the women who do not wish to stay. I mean you and the others no harm. Step aside.”
The eye went round and wide, and the door was slammed shut.
Rex sighed. He tried once more. “Don’t make this difficult for yourself. I mean you no harm. There is no one left to punish you for letting me in. Open the door or I will open it for you, and it won’t go well for you.”
The soft man was no threat to him, unless he had a weapon. Rex didn’t think that was likely. He was running out of time, though. The sun was now rising higher in the sky and leading a flock of women through Dammam’s streets to the hotel where his gear was would be inadvisable at best.
He was seconds from kicking the doors in when they flew open from both sides. Hande stood behind them, dressed from head to toe in a voluminous black abaya, her head covered in a hijab. If she’d worn a niqab as well, covering the rest of her face except for her eyes, he wouldn’t have recognized her.
“Hurry,” she said. “The others are frightened. I told them to dress like this and wait.”
“You did the right thing, Hande,” Rex told her. “What about the wives and children, and the other pleasure wives?”
“They are too frightened to leave. They have made their decisions and will stay. I cannot say how long we have. Someone may have already telephoned for help.”
“Maybe not. I disabled the phone panel,” he said, realizing even as he said it that it may not mean anything to her. And that it may not have been the only phone panel, though he would have expected to hear sirens by now if any phone in the residence was operative. It was highly unlikely the women or the faharmana had a cell phone. Still, haste was not a bad idea.
Hande led him through the harem quarters to the courtyard, where the women had reassembled. Because Hande had told him how they’d be dressed, he wasn’t surprised to see his little flock resembled a murder of crows instead of a group of beautiful women. He was surprised that there was an unexpected seventh figure, much smaller than the others but dressed in a diminutive version of their costume, holding the hand of one of the women he hadn’t met yet.
“What’s this?”
“Her daughter,” Hande said. She must have anticipated the question. “She is an obedient child. She will cause no trouble.”
Except that she doesn’t have a passport, and children belong to the father in Saudi Arabia.
Rex knew the women probably knew the problem as well as he did. But he could not leave the woman behind, nor could he separate the child from the mother. This rescue was taking more twists than he’d ever imagined. Challenging his moral compass all the time. He would just have to make the best of it. The van he’d rented… when? He’d lost track of the days. The van had sufficient room for everyone including the child.
Now his question was how to get them all to the hotel. Which led to the next question. Was his room still being held, or had they removed his things, towed the van, and rendered his key inoperable? If they’d decided he wasn’t coming back, it presented a few more problems to deal with.
First things first.
“Is there a vehicle here that will accommodate all of us?” he asked. He assumed the women were sometimes taken as a group to shop or for entertainment. If not, he’d have to go and examine the available vehicles for himself before taking the women out of the courtyard. He might have to take a couple or three trips to ferry them all to the hotel and his rental van. If it was still there.
His relief was palpable when Hande told him there was a modified Lincoln Town Car, like he’d seen used as limousines in the States. Not suitable for a cross-country trip, probably, but adequate to carry the seven women, the toddler, Digger, and himself as well as food and water.
Speaking of Digger… Where’d he go?
The familiar pressure of the dog against his leg was missing. Rex looked down and found Digger sitting calmly next to the little girl. Her eyes and mouth were at odds. The eyes were frightened. Th
e mouth was smiling. And her little hand was hovering over Digger’s head, a stretch for her, since he was as tall sitting as she was standing. She held tightly to her mother’s hand as she leaned toward the dog.
Digger was also smiling, and he’d ducked his head, so the child could pet him. She wouldn’t know that mouth full of sharp teeth with the tongue hanging out meant a smile, but something in the dog’s stillness had reassured her enough to want to touch him.
Rex was touched by the innocence. He’d once been as innocent as that child, and the dog he’d wanted to pet then had nearly killed him. Digger could bite that child in two with one snap, but he wouldn’t. Rex was sure of it. Just then, the little girl made a fist and punched Digger square in the eye.
But to Rex's surprise and relief, all he did was close the eye and his mouth.
“Digger, come.” Rex spoke sharply. If the kid was going to torment the dog, Rex couldn’t be sure of his reaction.
But Digger just turned his head and looked at him. As if to say, “don't worry I've got it.”
The next moment the child had pulled away from her mother’s hand and was hanging around Digger's neck with both arms, babbling in a semblance of Arabic that Rex assumed was baby talk.
Digger smiled while he looked at Rex. See, I told you I've got it.
Rex sighed in relief. He was right. The dog knew the little girl was just a baby and would tolerate a little pain from her explorations of this new friend.
The potential crisis averted, Rex told Hande to lead the way to the garage. The women fell into line behind her, some in twos, others walking alone. The woman with the toddler swept her up into her arms and Digger followed them. Rex brought up the rear, but as they passed into the home, he hurried to catch up with Hande, so he could defend if anyone challenged them.
When it happened, Rex didn’t even have time to get involved. The farharmana stepped in front of Hande from the other side, but she simply swept him aside with one arm. It had been a token effort, not worth Rex’s attention.
